


Friendship, the Beginning/End Of

by Lise



Category: Journey into Mystery
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Late Night Conversations, With a side of angst, Yuletide, no plot here nope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:32:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet night and a harmless conversation about nothing much of importance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendship, the Beginning/End Of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xieathe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xieathe/gifts).



> This series and these characters continue to break my heart on a regular basis, and apparently I have a hard time getting away from that. Happy Yuletide, and I hope my offering pleases!

“Do you ever think-” 

“No.” Loki turned his head just a little to scowl at Leah where she was sitting perfectly straight-backed next to him. It was a cool night, a good kind of night, quiet and clear and with nothing much going on. No Asgard or world needing saving, everything in its proper place, and Loki had a half a feeling that he could be bored but decided not to be. 

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“I don’t have to.” 

Loki narrowed his eyes at her and attempted the fearsome glare he’d been doing some work on. It did not appear to work at all. (He wondered if it would have worked from the Old Him, the nasty one. The Ikol one. He didn’t really think so.) “Maybe I was about to ask if you ever think about how much you like milkshakes. Cause I _know_ you do.”

“You weren’t.” Leah gave him one of those looks that Loki felt sure she’d picked up from Hela at some point that just made one want to wither in abject shame. Well, except for him, of course. Loki did not _have_ any shame. “Can’t you stay quiet for a little while?”

“Was that a rhetorical question?”

There was that glare again, and Loki couldn’t help but grin, just a little, before directing his eyes skyward again. He remembered somewhere, dimly, being able to walk through the stars like the sky was made of stepping stones, finding his way along paths no one else could follow. One of those old memories, from some time before. He didn’t remember things having changed, but he thought they must have. Surely Asgard had not always looked at him as they did now. Surely they had not always seemed to watch him half expecting…

At some point he must have had Thor’s trust, to lose it.

Loki pushed that thought away. Thinking of Thor still hurt. They’d won, and he’d seen to it that Thor died for them to do so. It would have, he thought, been easier if he’d done it to be Bad. But that was just what needed to be done. (That didn’t really make it any better.)

“I’m serious, though,” he said, after a couple moments. 

“A first,” Leah murmured, but she didn’t interrupt further, and after a moment he took that for permission. 

“Do you ever think about if there are other worlds out there where things are different?” Loki lifted up a hand and looked at the stars from between his fingers, and then let it drop behind his head. “Like where…where I never remembered being Loki, or where we didn’t stop the serpent, or where you and me weren’t friends-” He half expected her to object that they were not, in fact, friends, and braced himself for it. She didn’t, though. “Or – something.”

Silence. He glanced over to make sure Leah hadn’t just…vanished, or something, but she was still there, barely moving. He wondered if that was something they taught handmaidens, or if it was just Leah. “If you don’t want to answer you can _say-_ ”

“Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Sometimes. I do.” 

Loki blinked, faintly startled. “—and what kinds of worlds do you think about?”

“None of your business.” Her voice was just faintly sharp. Loki blinked, slightly startled, and then rolled over to prop himself up on his elbow, starting to grin. 

“Oooh, do I have to guess?”

“If you try I will leave and you can walk back home.” Leah sounded almost defensive, he realized, and almost wanted to frown, a thought fluttering in and out of his head too fast to catch. 

“You wouldn’t.”

“Watch me.” 

Loki considered testing her, but ultimately that seemed both dangerous and likely to put Leah in a poor mood, and he didn’t really want that. It was a nice night, and he wanted to keep it that way, at least a little bit. Nice. Quiet. Avoiding any unexpected hexes from his BFF. He rolled to his back again, head resting on a hand, and tried to think what sort of things Leah might think about changing. 

They were quiet again, for a little while. Loki felt oddly as though there was something he was supposed to say, and couldn’t think what it was. 

“You’re not always so bad,” Leah said, suddenly, sounding more thoughtful than anything else. Loki blinked at the sky, and then at her. 

“Doesn’t admitting that break one of your rules?” 

The look Leah gave him was admirably disdainful. “Of course not. You have simply been uniquely tolerable this evening.”

“Uniquely-” Loki made a face at her. “I am _always_ ‘uniquely tolerable.’” 

“Unique I might give you.” 

“I am handsome and charming and charismatic,” Loki said. A pebble bounced neatly off the tip of his nose and Loki picked it up and threw it back, though he suspected it went wide and didn’t really mind. “Hey!”

“And modest, too.”

“No point in being modest about greatness,” Loki said sagely, and received another pebble to the face.

Tomorrow, Loki thought, they might do anything. They might have to stop some new threat, or find homes for some other ferocious beasts in miniature, or maybe none of that, maybe it would just be Asgardia and keeping his distance from the (numerous) people who seemed determined to find an excuse to introduce his face to the dirt. Leah might have Important Duties that would leave him alone with no one but Ikol for company for a day. But right now…

The queer thought jumped into his head that he might not have much longer. _They_ might not have much longer. But that was ridiculous. Why wouldn’t they?

“You are an excellent BFF,” he said, on impulse, though he shifted a little bit away before doing so, just in case. 

“If you’re going to ask me for something,” Leah said, faintly warningly.

“No!” That came out a bit more indignantly than even he had meant it to. “No, that wasn’t – I was just saying.” He felt a nasty little twinge, that she would think that, and subdued it. He _did_ ask her for things. Because she was one of a very few people he could ask. 

“Hm.” She did not sound entirely convinced. Loki sat up properly, then, and looked straight at her.

“I mean it,” he said, feeling unaccountably wrong-footed. Perhaps sincerity really wasn’t something he was good at, or ever would be. “You might be cranky and a know-it-all and have a tendency to give me these looks like you really wish I’d stop talking – like now – but-”

“Is this supposed to be a compliment?” Leah was beginning to sound faintly affronted. Loki talked faster. 

“—but you’re a good friend. And I appreciate your help and your company and…things.” Loki trailed off, somewhat less than elegantly. “So…yes.”

Silence, again; this time, Loki thought, somewhat foreboding. He nearly cringed, and looked studiously at a point that was not Leah. 

“Hm,” said Leah, again. 

“Was that a good ‘hm’ or a bad ‘hm?’” Loki asked, carefully. 

“It was a ‘hm’ hm.” Leah stood up, suddenly, and turned. “Let’s go.”

Loki looked up at her, but her face was in shadow and he couldn’t see her expression. “It’s not even late,” he protested. He’d just said something, maybe, and he didn’t think she was _mad_ but wasn’t sure what she was, and wasn’t he supposed to be good at this? “We don’t have to go back yet.”

“I’m ready to leave,” she said, regally cool. “If you’re not-”

“Okay, okay,” Loki said hurriedly. “I’m coming.” He shoved himself to his feet and padded over to her, brushing his hands off on his pants. Looking back, the hill they were on didn’t seem so far away, though the lights of Broxton weren’t much brighter than the stars overhead from here, and Asgardia seemed small, a strangely shaped crag hanging in the sky like an ornament on one of the festive Midgardian trees. 

As always, he watched Leah closely but couldn’t quite catch how she made her portals. He stepped forward and found himself not in Broxton but in Asgardia, in the All Mother’s gardens. He turned, faintly surprised. 

“Did you mean to-”

“Yes.” 

Leah didn’t come to Asgardia. Loki wasn’t sure if it was _couldn’t_ or _didn’t want to_ and wasn’t sure he would blame her for the latter. “But I thought we were going to-”

“No.”

Loki fell still, stared at her. “Did I say something?” he asked quietly, finally. 

“No,” said Leah, and for a moment he thought that would be all she would say, and he had to wonder if she’d see him again, but then she added, “Except perhaps too much. You’re an idiot.”

Loki summoned up a smile. “So you tell me,” he said, rather quippily, if he could say so himself. “On a fairly regular basis.”

“And it remains true.” Leah turned in a swirl of black hair. “Do not do anything too foolish before I see you again.”

“So I will-”

“Of course,” she said, almost snapped. “Undoubtedly you will have something you cannot manage without me.” Loki almost sighed in relief.

“Oh,” he said. “Because just for a moment…” He’d had the strange feeling, that weird _running out of time_ feeling again. It made him uneasy, itchy in his skin. 

“I am Hela’s handmaiden,” Leah said, drawing herself up, regal once more. “What do you think I’m going to do, go gallivanting off to parts unknown?” 

Loki summoned a smile. “Well, if you do I trust you’d tell me fir-”

If one could slam a portal in someone’s face, that was what Leah did. Loki stared at the now unremarkable patch of air, somewhat bemused. It was not a sensation he was accustomed to. And he was not entirely sure that he liked it. Something had happened, and he wished he was sure what it had been. 

The flutter of wings and a familiar weight on his shoulder alerted him to Ikol’s arrival, perched comfortably on his shoulder. Ikol, he thought, probably would have known what Leah wasn’t saying. But he found himself glad the bird hadn’t been there. 

It’d been the sentimental, silly sort of thing Ikol probably wouldn’t like. 

“Well,” he said, mostly to himself. “That was odd.”

“What was?” Ikol asked, though Loki had the oddest feeling he knew very well. His spine prickled and he turned around, started trudging back through the quiet gardens. 

“I don’t know,” he said, after a moment, and lifted a hand to pet the magpie’s head idly, only to get his fingers pecked at for his trouble. “I really don’t.”

“Perhaps it shall come to you.” Ikol’s claws pricked a little, through his tunic. 

“Maybe,” Loki said, but he was pretty sure it was already gone.

* * *

_But did you ever really think it could be true?_

Loki held very still, not sure why he thought it would matter. Maybe just for his own sake. 

_Best friends forever._ Maybe he had thought it could. 

Or maybe, at least, he’d wanted to. 

Did that make him the idiot Leah had always said he was?

Maybe that too.


End file.
